Vignettweets (A Working Title)

Bloom
Originally uploaded by somewhair

I just raided the Young Adult section of my local library. I also discovered, to my delight, that a book called Girls from da Hood is considered a CLASSIC. Oh the hilarious double-entendre of "classic" makes me laugh inside.

I think I may soon abandon this blog. I am no longer passionate about my de-cluttering project. In effect, I have already moved on just by virtue of being away from the cluttered home I sought to fix. I tried to remain informed about clutter and design and the related reflections and psychology those things brought on, but I can't pretend to be interested in something that falls more in the margins of my interests list than in the actual #1 slot.

My interests are always evolving though, and this is not to say that the project will forever have dropped off my list. It has definitely been a year of interesting randomness, emotions, and amazing internet finds.

Now, my interests have focused themselves more on writing and reading than de-cluttering, as may be clear by my mysterious teenager-book raid. In any case, I would like to devote some attention to a new project: I'm excited to exercise my creative muscles by blogging one vignette for every writing prompt suggested by Twitter user @writingprompt. I haven't started just yet, but keep your eyes peeled for new stuff at Vignettweets (just a working title so far). Wish me luck! And always feel free to e-mail me at alexandrayf at gmail dot com or comment on old posts here to stay in touch.

It's been great.

Organizing my internet life

Originally uploaded by secretsofabutterfly

Here are some tools that I love using to organize my life, since today has become such a frenzied organizational jubilee.

• Food & Calorie Finder iGoogle gadget: I decided I wanted to keep better track of my health, so I installed this gadget on iGoogle. You can search kajillions of food items to create a rundown of the food and calories you take in each day. Then, you can indicate how many calories you've burned, either by actually working out or just by going about your day. ("Desk Work" burns like 100 calories an hour!) I like this because it also has a calendar and calculates all your info for you. I found out you have to burn like 3500 calories to lose one pound, so this is a great way to keep track of how close you are to your goal.


• Firefox bookmarks toolbar: It's so much easier than typing in URLs all day long. When I'm on a site, I highlight the URL and drag it into the toolbar space. Firefox's default option is to show the site's icon with the URL next to it, but if you right-click the icon and hit "properties," you can erase the URL so that a bunch of beautiful icons pop up in your toolbar! One click, and you're there. Easy peasy. Here's mine! Which ones can you figure out?
  
  
  


• Mozilla Sunbird: I never figured out how to use Office Outlook but I wanted a calendar that I could use on my desktop that works like Outlook and Google Calendar/iCal without needing an internet connection. So I found Sunbird, and it is great! It lets you customize the colors of all your life categories (school, business, personal, travel etc.) and alerts you if you want it to. It's very customizable, which I like. It's not perfect, but it works for me! The to-do list pane is super useful.


• Google Reader: I subscribe to so many stupid blogs. :P No, most of the ones I subscribe to are adorable, creative and girly. One I found recently was pretentious and pop. ♥ But I need to keep track of these blogs and sites! I can't be trekking all over the internet every day, that takes too much energy. So Google Reader culls them all together and updates when my blogs update, so I have a nice digest to read through every morning or night.


• CCleaner: I actually have to run this again soon - CCleaner is a registry cleaner-upper for your computer. I'm not entirely sure all the magic spells it conducts within my hard drive, but it makes it work faster and smoother. It's like a Swiffer for your computer!

(via)

City still don't sleep

click for larger
Originally uploaded by Globe Trodden

I love this picture from Salon columnist and pilot Patrick Smith. Photos like this exist everywhere - on the sidewalks, calling out to tourists so the vendors can make a neat profit off a couple wide-eyed buffoons; in museums; in coffee table books around the world, I'm sure. But I'm glad to say that I'm not quite jaded enough to scoff at the grandeur of this skyline, especially as photographed from inside the cockpit of an airplane.

It also makes me really excited for New York, I Love You coming out in October. When Paris, Je T'Aime came out, I went through crazy pregnant lady mood swings about it. First I loved the idea and wanted intensely to see it. Then when I heard it was not a long-form single plot, I thought I would hate it because I hated Love, Actually at first. (I was 16 and had to be critical like the budding editor I believed myself to be becoming.)

But I saw Paris, Je T'Aime this year and thoroughly enjoyed it. It's a cute movie to watch in bed while having tea and pita. I think I'll be even more enthralled with New York, I Love You because I have actually lived here. And, similar to the fact that I feel very patriotic for America at the very heartmost part of my heart, I will always have a soft spot of memories for New York and the Bay Area. One of my deepest, most imagination-frenzied dreams is to live in and befriend as many cities as is reasonable for a lifetime.

I wonder which other cities people could make similar movies about that would be romantic enough to do well. Often, I feel that New York, Paris, San Francisco, Venice and London are all so overly romanticized in the movies that they've become clichéd. What amazing other cities can we appreciate? Surely creative minds have thought of Moscow, Kyoto, Montreal, São Paolo, Nairobi...

Publishing intern blog

Chrysanthemum
Originally uploaded by Seitti

So The Intern is a really interesting blog. She does what I can't quite do - talk about interning in the publishing world in a funny way while still managing to keep things anonymous! I am super bad at hiding things and keeping secrets, so I probably will not write much about my internships.

In any case, she works at a publishing house/company rather than an agency, but nevertheless I find myself agreeing with her and learning from her. The internet is a wonderful thing.